Journal of Mosquito Research 2015, Vol.5, No.17, 1-10
8
Figure 4 Comparisons of entomological indices (HI, CI, and BI) in different localities in Nainital and Dehradun
water collections in artificial containers, which may
ignore the natural breeding sites of
Ae. albopictus
.
Moreover, we may not able to identify all imported
dengue cases, or detect asymptomatic dengue cases.
However, our study successfully describes the dengue
endemicity in Uttarakhand, characterizes the dengue
epidemics in 2010, and investigates the entomological
measures of risk of dengue.
We observed that both numbers of dengue cases and
numbers of deaths due to dengue are gradually
increasing from 2006 to 2010. This increase may be
associated with several reasons like increasing population,
unhygienic living, climate change, developed disease
reporting systems, better diagnostic facilities etc.
Interestingly, it is evident from the month wise
distribution of dengue cases (Figure 2) that a dengue
epidemic was more severe from September to
November, just after the highest rainfall, probably
reflecting the cultural habit of collecting rainwater,
and the abundance of unmanaged water sources.
These findings are consistent with those of Strickman
and Kittayapong (2002).
We studied the prevalence of
Aedes
larvae in context
to dengue epidemics in Uttarakhand. During our
survey, all non-hermetically closed containers containing
any volume of water were considered potential for
mosquito breeding; the highest percentage of positive
containers for larvae/pupae has shown up in tires, tin
containers, Fridge vessels, Cement tanks and Plastic
containers. Interestingly, the majority of these positive
containers is related to water supply and garbage
collections. These findings are in line with those
reported by Focks & Chadee (1997) and Medronho et
al. (2009). It is worth noting that in some areas we
found 100% of surveyed containers are positive for
mosquito breeding (Table 4).
